The issue was highlighted last year when the daughter of Strictly Come Dancing presenter Claudia Winkleman suffered serious burns when her Halloween outfit caught fire.
Responding to calls from MPs and fire chiefs Trading Standards will conduct spot checks on hundreds of retailers – including online retailers, small shops and large chain stores – as part of the investigation.
Evidence gathered will be examined in conjunction with a separate study being conducted by the British Standards Institute focusing on whether Halloween costumes should be classed as clothing rather than toys.
Trading Standards officials will report their findings later in the year.
Claudia Winkleman said she as “extremely happy” to see progress being made on the issue. “We’re extremely happy the government is taking action on this and we’re so grateful to the supermarkets who are selling safer costumes,” said the presenter, whose eight-year-old daughter’s witch outfit “melted into her skin” when she brushed against a lit candle as she celebrated Halloween last year.
Said Leon Livermore, chief executive at the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI): “CTSI takes issues of product safety very seriously, and hopes the evidence gathered as part of this investigation will help to establish whether the current flammability standards are still fit for purpose.”
Andrew Opie from the British Retail Consortium said it was developing new codes of practice for flammability safety testing and safety labelling and was committed to ensuring that all testing was “robust” and safety standards “sufficiently rigorous”.
Retailers had worked with British Standards to have the existing toy flammability standard (EN 71-2) reviewed and had tested children’s costumes against “more stringent nightwear flammability standards”, he said.
Responding to an IFSEC Global story earlier on the year on the issue, however, one IFSEC Global subscriber said the industry was reacting only belatedly to events. Commenting below the line trv8Mike wrote: “A quite amazing twist of language to cleverly define a ‘toy’ which children wear as not being clothing! I have motorcycle clothing which I go out and ‘play’ in on my bike, but that has to meet many standards.
“All the stores were quite happy to flog this stuff knowing its potential dangers for many years, until a high profile case gets in the news. Suddenly, they are ‘investigating’ any improvements which could be me made. They are the pipers and could have easily specified a better product from any supplier, but that would COST MORE!!”
Ninety-four people were admitted to hospitals in England last year with injuries arising from igniting or melting clothing. Twenty-one of these were under the age of 18.
The Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA) has campaigned heavily on this issue, welcoming Sainsbury’s announcement in May that from Halloween 2015 it would test all children’s fancy-dress outfits to the British nightwear flammability standard.
The supermarket will then introduce more rigorous tests in 2016.
The CFOA supported a campaign launched by the BBC’s Watchdog programme earlier in the year to change fire safety regulations on children’s fancy dress costumes.
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PRIMEsystems FIREXIntl ClaudiaWinkle: “We’re extremely happy the government is taking action on this” – we are too! #firesafety